I spent the entire day yesterday til 3am trying to fix this, and all the possible solutions you can find on the web just don't work for me.
I agreed to some regular updates on Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS, all worked fine. Ever since starting back up, only the stuff that was lying around on my Desktop is to be seen. One of the "fixes" even caused a blackscreen and I couldn't even boot my OS anymore, I had to start a Ubuntu safe session and reconfigure lightdm in the terminal to even make my OS work again. I'm also still confused on why it allows you to choose between lightdm and gdm as a manager.
I checked the .xsession-errors
file and it reports
...
upstart: unity7 main process ended, respawning
upstart: unity7 main process (4644) terminated with status 1
...
metacity --replace & disown at least temporarily allows me to minimise, drag and close windows.
ccsm won't apply any changes made at all after I close it.
I've tried everything google can find for you...
dconf reset -f /org/compiz
setsid unity
unity --reset-icons
reinstall unity
reinstall ubuntu desktop
initctl restart unity-panel-service
update, upgrade, dist-upgrade
aptitude
etc....
Absolutely NOTHING works!!
Any ideas?